The source told Bloomberg that the Waterloo, Ont.-based company is seeking an agreement to license its mobile phone software.

The sources told Bloomberg that RIM's willingness to seek help from external advisers suggests a new openness to a takeover or a strategic investment.

RIM shares have taken a beating on the stock market as the company lost market share to Apple's iPhone and devices using Google's Android operating system.

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The PlayBook tablet, which was the BlackBerry maker's answer to the iPad, went on sale in April 2011. Since then, RIM has lost $485 million on unsold units.
At the beginning of January, RIM slashed the price of all models of its tablet to $299. The special pricing will last until February 4.
PlayBooks, which come in 16, 32 and 64 gigabyte models, typically retail for $499, $599 and $699, respectively, according to CNET.
In November, RIM temporarily slashed the price of the 16GB version of the tablet to $199 at certain retail locations.

In October, BlackBerry suffered an outage that affected many of its then 70-million worldwide users, leaving some of its customers in Asia, Europe, Latin American and Africa without service for as many as three days.
Some users in the U.S. were affected, but not for as long a period.

In December, two RIM executives were fired after a flight they were on was forced to be diverted because the pair's "drunken rowdiness," the AP reports.

Research in Motion announced in December 2011 that its highly anticipated BlackBerry 10 platform won't be available until the end of 2012.
According to the AP, the company claims the holdup is because the chipset needed for the phones running the platform won't be available until the middle of this year.

In 2011, RIM's stock dropped a massive 75 percent.

In less than a year, RIM's share of the U.S. smartphone market dropped by almost 50 percent, from 30.4 percent in January 2011 to 16.6 percent in November 2011.
In 2009, RIM controlled 44 percent of the US smartphone market.
(Pictured above is the HTC Desire HD Android, which runs on Google's much more popular Android platform.)

A nearly 75 percent drop in stock price in 2011 did not please investors. At the end of 2011, Jaguar Financial Corp, one of the largest investors in RIM, called "for substantial corporate governance change and for a sale of RIM, whether as a whole or as separate parts."
Vic Alboini, the chief executive of Jaguar Financial, told the BBC earlier this month that RIM has "lost it."
"The party is over, we believe, in terms of trying to design that cool, tech savvy smartphone," he said. "Microsoft has over $50 billion in cash, RIM has $1.5 billion. There is no way they'll be able to compete."